Comments on: Is advocacy only feasible in formal democracies? Lessons from 6 multi-stakeholder initiatives in Vietnamhttp://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/can-you-only-do-advocacy-in-formal-democracies-lessons-from-6-multi-stakeholder-initiatives-in-vietnam/
How active citizens and effective states can change the worldTue, 15 Aug 2017 06:25:00 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.15By: Rob Nashhttp://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/can-you-only-do-advocacy-in-formal-democracies-lessons-from-6-multi-stakeholder-initiatives-in-vietnam/#comment-20115
Thu, 01 May 2014 01:59:51 +0000http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=17847#comment-20115Thanks for a very interesting post. Not surprisingly, there are many things here that resonate with working on advocacy here in Myanmar. Alongside the reforms that are opening up politics (and the economy) in Myanmar, there is rapid growth happening in an already diverse and active set of civil society organisations, and also the entry of many new actors like the growing and increasingly influential private sector investors. Ability to gain access to the spaces where key decisions are made is increasing but still limited. But arguably some of the most promising initiatives have created spaces work with a range of stakeholders at local and regional level around key issues (e.g. local fisherfolk in the Delta region were supported to create forums to raise issues including regulations governing fishing rights together with CSOs, businesses and government officials and politicians – resulting in positive support from government to tackle some issues and to support more spaces for this type of discussion).
And just this week Oxfam has been working with members of one key coalition – the Food Security Working Group – to identify priority policy issues and start developing advocacy strategies together. Perhaps one of the challenges as we work on this is to balance the establishment of more concrete strategies for advocacy, with retaining flexibility to make the most of those ‘boundary-pushing’ approaches that many individual advocates and organisations are using already to create space and support for change.
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